They sound like banshees wailing, bones breaking, dragons belching. They whip gargantuan structures about as if multi-ton objects were toys.

Director Steven Quale paints tornadoes as mindless monsters in his latest project, ” Into the Storm,” a visually stunning disaster-thriller that ultimately feels cheap with its perverse take on death and gratitude.

“Storm” opens with a prologue of sorts: A car full of teens, waiting like sitting ducks in the dead of night, is pulverized by an invisible twister. But not before one of the kids jumps out to capture the mayhem on his cellphone.

The news reports follow the opening credits. A catastrophic storm system is heading toward the fictionalized town of Silverton (too close for comfort, maybe) in Tornado Alley. Screenwriter John Swetnam has trifurcated the movie’s narrative: storm chasers, daredevils and a high school community each experience the tornadoes in their own ways.

At the helm of the pro storm chasers is Pete (Matt Walsh), whose lifelong dream has been to capture footage of the eye of a storm, “a sight only God has seen.” He’s joined by a meteorologist (Sarah Wayne Callies), as well as a slew of professional videographers (including Arlen Escarpeta and Jeremy Sumpter) who are crafting a documentary.

The documentary angle is a sleek quirk. Pete’s videographers wield cameras like professionals, thus giving the film a first-person perspective that trumps the stale shakiness of today’s found-footage films, but still gives “Storm” an immersive edge.

Every thread of the story has its own sub-element. Walsh’s Pete is a career-obsessed jerk who cares more about storms than his people. Callies and Richard Armitage take turns as single parents struggling to connect with their kids.

Armitage’s two onscreen offspring, Donnie (Max Deacon) and Trey (Nathan Kress), are not bad. But unfortunately for Deacon, the Donnie character is sculpted as a spineless Disney Channel wimp. Trey offers refreshing comic relief.

There’s a lot to chew on here. Consequently, the script is packed so tight there’s not much room for meaningful, fleshed-out character development. (Enough room for cheesy, thriller-recycled dialogue, though.)

Many of the characters, their bite-sized moments of drama and their arcs disappear into the background of the film, playing second fiddle to the real star: the tornado(es).

Fans of the “Final Destination” series will delight in “Storm’s” disaster-porn tendencies. Beautifully constructed, jaw-dropping twisters ruin a school and its graduation; tear through homes, fields and used-car lots; and toss trees and semis around like broccoli and Hot Wheels.

All this gorgeous, hypnotic doom on the big screen leads to death and destruction, which is presented as a cool, exhilarating ride.

When a storm-chaser is swallowed by a flaming tornado, his comrades feign grief. He’s forgotten in seconds. The “Storm” continues as a shameless, tone-deaf, unrelenting string of disasters. Then, at film’s close there’s a laughable, shallow, beyond-cheesy moral about being alive.

The movie feels like it has its requisite parts. But something doesn’t mesh. There’s a great cast, but most of the acting comes off as caricatured and one-note. The plot is well paced — the film clocks in just under 90 minutes — but every scene without a tornado feels anticlimactic. There are human elements, but they’re never fully explored.

If you want an awesome surround-sound, massive screen experience of an EF5 tornado from the inside-out, pony up for a ticket.

But if tornadoes hit a little too close to home for you, stay away: Delicacy and sentiment are not this film’s strongest suits.

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